


the other side of the door

by Deputychairman



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Finn & Poe are each other's salvation: discuss, Finn is the moral heart of the story, M/M, PTSD, Poe Dameron hurts so pretty, the Star Wars song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 15:36:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7177610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deputychairman/pseuds/Deputychairman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one alive has more cause to be afraid of Kylo Ren, really really afraid of Kylo Ren, than Poe Dameron. Finn might wear the scar Ren left all down his back, but he got it with a lightsaber in his hand and Rey crumpled behind him. He struck his own blow, and it was all over in a cold white minute of fury. Poe was alone in that cell for hours, strapped down and helpless. It would be the performance of a lifetime if he could make it through this stupid song.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the other side of the door

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this gifset](http://deputychairman.tumblr.com/post/141276109868/howlingsoldier-and-hey-kylo-ren-in-his/) of Oscar Isaac singing the Bill Murray Star Wars song

The children don’t notice.

There are five of them, cross-legged on the duracrete floor, and Finn can’t tell how old they are. He hasn’t been around children since he was a child himself, barely remembers anything from before he was, what – seven? Nothing from before he was a cadet, anyway. People here say they remember back to two or three. Even if it’s only in feelings and images, they remember things: Poe remembers falling out of a tree, flying with his mother. Maybe nothing happened to Finn that he’d want to remember.

Remembering isn’t the same as understanding. These children are old enough to talk, young enough that someone else wipes their noses – they might be four? Five? So if they notice, they don’t understand what it is they’re seeing.

The kid looking after them doesn’t either. He’s only got ears for Poe’s heartbreaking singing voice, only has eyes for Poe’s hands on the guitar. It’s written all over his face what he’s thinking, and Finn remembers being 17 better than he remembers being however old these children are. Your hormones are in charge, and lot of nuance goes over your head. Poe’s a good-looking Starfighter pilot, singing to a bunch of children – it’s almost a cliché, but the kid doesn’t know that. It hasn’t crossed his mind that the good-looking pilot should have chosen a different song, that the good looking pilot is trying to prove something to himself and right now is the moment when he’s going lose the bet. The stakes are never higher than when your opponent is your own self-image. Finn should know.

Finn does know. He’s heard Poe’s voice break before, and he’s stood in a corridor on a destroyer and seen the choices he could make stretching out left and right, as clear as that. Left, I walk away; right, I go in there and get him and this is my way out. He’s had three minutes before shift change to decide who he is, used that sound as an acid test. Can I stay here? Can I shoot unarmed villagers? Can I be a man who hears another human being scream like that, and doesn’t try to help him?

So Finn notices. He isn’t really paying attention until Poe starts the song, the one Resistance children (and adults, for that matter) sing to put a name to their fears. Where everyone pretends their fears didn’t grow up as one of them, with the face of their General’s son. _Does he scare you as much as he scares me?_

Finn listens to Poe get almost to the end, because Poe is brave and Poe is fine, he tells everybody he’s fine and everybody believes him. Finn sprung him from the interrogation cell, Resistance doctors put three stitches in the cut in his head, and he’s fine. The First Order will never win as long as Commander Poe Dameron is fine, right there where everyone can see him, singing to five human children and their minder, and Finn here in the corner because – because he is. He likes the children, he likes being around Poe, he likes listening. He’s got nothing better to do right now. Yeah.

Poe’s _pretending_ to be scared, because that’s what you do when you sing this song. You look up at your audience, meet their eyes one by one; you hunch your shoulders up like you’re trying to make yourself smaller. You mime out fear, because if you can pretend to be afraid, then you aren’t really afraid. Pull the curtain against the dark, close your eyes and maybe the monster won’t see you either.

There’s a waver when he sings the name, but Poe doesn’t break until the very last word. He does sing beautifully – Finn is no judge of music, but he’s heard Poe sing before and now he has a baseline for pitch and melody and timbre. He’s heard other singers put a tremor in their voice, drop to a whisper, reduce a room full of children to a wild-eyed delighted simulacrum of real terror. That’s the whole point. They scream, they run, “Kylo Ren” scoops up the one he knows won’t really be afraid, then lets the others catch him, rescue their friend.

That isn’t what’s happening now, on the very last line. Of course it isn’t. It’s all far too close for comfort, prickly on his skin and under his fingernails and in his hair. You can’t hide from fear you carry with you. Finn is a fool for not interrupting this when the first chord rang out.

He was there, in that corridor. He could hear through that door. He didn’t know Poe then, was thinking _how do I get out of here_ more than any detail about what was happening on the other side of it. He has a pretty good idea by now, and he still doesn’t want to think about it. No one alive has more cause to be afraid of Kylo Ren, really really afraid of Kylo Ren, than Poe Dameron. Finn might wear the scar Ren left all down his back, but he got it with a lightsaber in his hand and Rey crumpled behind him. He struck his own blow, and it was all over in a cold white minute of fury. Poe was alone in that cell for hours, strapped down and helpless. It would be the performance of a lifetime if he could make it through this stupid song.

But he can’t.

The last word disappears when his breathing hitches, that involuntary whole body flinch of something nameless and huge inside you taking over. Poe blinks fast, head tilted back so he’s looking at the ceiling and Finn can see his throat as he swallows once, twice. Trying to get it down again, but it won’t go.

His hands don’t stop on the instrument, but it sounds wrong. Contaminated drinking water, toxins in the air – an aftertaste in the music. Maybe the children don’t notice that either. They’re grinning and playing scared, just like they’re supposed to.

Poe gets to his feet with a smile that’s so brittle it’s about to break into a thousand sharp pieces. It’s going to hurt when it shatters, and the pieces are going to cut, right there by his throat.

“Ok, I gotta, I gotta go for a minute – BB-8, you take over for me, huh? I’ll be right -” _back,_ it was meant to be, _I’ll be right back_ , but the lie hovers there unfinished. It’s not really lying if you’re talking about yourself, is it?

The droid beeps, and maybe it knows and maybe it doesn’t, Finn can’t tell.

“No, I’m fine, I just - ” Poe says, hand looping in the air to indicate _out there, away from here,_ and then he’s out the door. Finn doesn’t need to speak binary to understand that BB-8 isn’t any more convinced than he is – its next beep is just as wrong as Poe’s last chord. The droid’s head swivels from the door to the children and then to Finn. Back to the children. Back to the door. Finn again.

“It’s ok,” Finn says. He’s already on his feet. It’s like that corridor, hearing that screaming, only this time what can he do? He can follow, but he can’t change anything. It’s already happened. Weeks ago now. “I’ll go and - ” he doesn’t say _make sure he’s ok_. He doesn’t want the children to notice.

 

It’s raining outside, a fine drizzle more mist than drops. The air is grey, the trees are very deep green and Finn can’t see Poe anywhere. There’s no sound to follow, just children’s voices behind him. 

He heads straight ahead, where leaves and branches make a curtain that almost touches the ground. A door of foliage. Then he hesitates, because Finn’s gone through a door for Poe before. Maybe he’s the last person Poe wants to see right now, maybe he’ll just make everything worse: a replay that brings it all back.

But BB-8 thought he should go. BB-8 knows Poe better than he does, and BB-8 was telling him to go. He can always turn around and get someone else if he sees he’s making it worse, can’t he? So Finn shoulders through the leaves, shudders as they shake water down the back of his neck. He takes a few steps, loud in the undergrowth and then out into clearer ground among the big trees, and there’s Poe on his haunches against the trunk of the first really sizable one as if he knew where Finn would look first. His eyes are tight shut, his fists clenched on his drawn up knees. Silent screaming, but somehow Finn heard it anyway.

He starts and opens his eyes when Finn says his name like he’s been caught doing something shameful.

“I’m fine,” he says fast, swallows. “I’ll be right back, I’m fine.”

“Okay,” Finn says. He nods encouragingly. Of course you’re fine.

Last time he put his blaster to Poe’s neck, held his arm, but there’s nobody to fool about his intentions here. He steps close, slow and easy, sits down on the damp leaves at Poe’s side so their shoulders touch, and Poe lets him.

The rain hasn’t reached the ground through the tree canopy yet, but water in the air has seeped down. He can feel how fast Poe’s breathing, the movement coming to him warm and panicked through bone and muscle and cotton. In the green grey light his hair is very black and there’s a shadow under his eyes.

Poe turns to face him.

“I’ll be right back,” he repeats. His jaw is clenched so hard his voice is distorted.

“Yeah, ok,” Finn agrees. “No rush, though.”

Behind them in the playroom, the children shout all at once. Poe flinches and then his brittle smile is back with a huff of breath through his teeth in lieu of laughter to keep it company. It’s working very hard, that smile, to put distance between Poe and the monster. _I’m fine if I can sing about it and I’m even more fine if I can laugh about it. If I can produce a sound where laughter ought to go._

Finn knows all about this. Some things get into your molecules, into your blood. It doesn’t mean that’s everything you are, but just like he’s the man the First Order made him, Poe’s the man Kylo Ren got his hands on. You can’t run away or hide in the woods from what happens to you. Or rather, you can, but you have to come out again in the end or just keep going forever. To the Outer Rim, the edge of the galaxy, wherever stars burn out and time stops. Finn doesn’t want to go there any more, and he doesn’t want Poe to go either.

It’s interesting to Finn how you can make pre-movements that tell another person how you’re about to move. The physical equivalent of knocking at a door, clearing your throat at the threshold. People have been doing that for him; they don’t know him well yet. Hands hover at his shoulder before they touch him. Poe’s squadron fling their arms open and cross the hangar towards him so he has time to react, if he wants to. So he lets the leaves rustle as he turns until he and Poe are a tangle of knees and muddy feet. The opposite of pretending: announcing. His arm goes up, in line with Poe’s shoulders, then in and closer, tiny angles and increments in two seconds.

Poe just looks at him. His gaze flicks minutely side to side as his focus shifts, and Finn wants to be literal, he wants to be obvious, he wants to say, _I got you out of it before, let me do it again._ Maybe if he had magical Force powers he even could.

Instead all he’s got is the animal comfort of his arm around Poe’s shoulders. Looking him right in the eye and not flinching away from what he knows happened, what they did to him. He pulls just a bit, the intention of a movement rather than anything his muscles recognise. But it’s enough for Poe.

His body follows the course Finn’s arms suggests, head coming down on Finn’s shoulder, those clenched fists still tight between them as Poe leans into him.

“I’m fine. Finn,” he starts, and there it is again, the crack all through his voice from throat to lip. Finn feels it like a blow to the ribs, _Poe never breaks but he’s letting you see this._

“Yeah, course you are,” Finn agrees. Poe’s hair is damp against his jaw, face hot and hidden in his shoulder. Finn wants to tell him _, I won’t look at you if you don’t want me to. I’m not trying to catch you out,_ but he doesn’t.

“I’m gonna, I’m just – I’m gonna get it together, buddy,” he says. “But it all got – it all came back, you know?” There’s a different, more focused, warmth that reaches Finn through his shirt when he speaks. The tension in him hums, an engine running too hot.

“Yeah,” Finn agrees. What else can he say? _I know, I heard you screaming through that door, I stood in that corridor on that ship we both got away from_. He’s not going to say that, so he just sits there. Rubs circles between Poe’s shoulderblades, turns words over and around in his head and doesn’t use any of them. Maybe there’s no need, maybe it’ll all pass through his arms, his palm – soak through Poe’s shirt, trickle up and down his spine like an antidote. Better than a blaster to the neck and a forced march, anyway. He’s come a long way since then.

If he can sit here like this, if Poe will accept it – lean into him and welcome it, even - then he’s really not a Stormtrooper any more. He _knows_ that, but he appreciates the proof all the same.

Eventually Poe takes a huge shuddering breath and pulls back, holds his hand out between them where Finn can see it. They both look down at his hand in this wet green light, watch it shaking.

“Best fucking pilot in the Resistance, huh?” he says. “Look at that.”

 

Much later, in Finn’s room, his hands aren’t shaking any more. His hands aren’t shaking because he’s holding onto Finn, touching him. If his breath hitches it’s because of the way Finn is kissing him, and when his voice breaks it’s because of Finn’s hands on him, and his mouth. He never did find any words that would work.

Finn lies next to him afterwards and thinks, _this isn’t what I meant_. But Poe is asleep, arm thrown across Finn’s chest, so Finn just traces the scar under his eye and brushes his hair off his forehead and doesn’t say anything at all.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come and have feelings about Poe Dameron and Finn with me on [Tumblr!](http://deputychairman.tumblr.com/)


End file.
